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Live Download Series Sale Now through December 31st, purchase #23 'Live In Paris' download and receive a coupon code for 15% off any other recordings from Bill Frisell’s Live Download Series. Once purchased, you will receive a zip file which includes the audio files, credits file and a coupon code. Then return HERE and add more (no limit) live concerts to the cart and upon checkout insert the promo code.

CDs on Sale 20% off a select few of Bill Frisell's albums including All We Are Saying, Beautiful Dreamers, Small Town and Sign of Life. Click HERE

The music from these sessions was recorded live to cassette on a stereo Panasonic boombox over the stretch of one hot summer in downtown Manhattan, 1981. It was all very stealthy and informal. I’d call up some people on a payphone and we’d meet at one or another of the many dirt-cheap rehearsal spaces on the Lower East Side. We would simply show up, light a cigarette, plug in, and start improvising. I’d give maybe a quick prompt or set a groove with a vague sketch of where it might lead, and a’hunting we would go . . . The only rule was that there were no rules and even if there were, there was nobody about to enforce them. We played completely free as an ensemble, inventing whole song structures together on the spot and even freestyling the lyrics sometimes as it all spilled out of us in one shared breath. . . . I invited William Burroughs but Allen Ginsberg showed up instead and jumped right on the mic. (you can hear the results of some of those sessions online at Ginsberg’s Stanford U. Archives). Sometimes members of Television or Defunkt or the Voidoids or Contortions or Ornette Coleman’s band dropped by unannounced and things swerved off into another zone of black operations. It felt more like experimental theater than a series of jam sessions; “wrong” was impossible because there was no right way to do the complete unknown. We were channeling something and we just ran away with it, wherever it wanted to take us . . It was in the air then. It was dangerous. You had to be there: . . . NYC, 1981 . . .

This concert was recorded on a modified stereo Walkman at OK Hotel in Seattle in June, 1993. It was the second night of a two night run before a mini-tour and the second time we’d ever played this material together live. You can hear us feeling our way through the wilderness of it, and to add to the drama, someone had made off with Bill’s prize delay pedal the night before and he quickly borrowed mine and was using it instantly in new ways I never dreamed possible (his solo on This is Only America is about as strange and mournful as I think art can get in the hands of a practicing master). We were all working without a net that night and having a lot of fun taking risks with the music as we tripped along the high-wire. Bill’s Klein guitar sounds as glorious as I’ve ever heard it, even under less-than-ideal recording conditions, and we ran through no less than two performances of Gone, Just Like a Train, which we had recently co-written together, along with the rest of this material. It feels to me now like it might have been only yesterday. . . .

Mary Halvorson: The Maid With The Flaxen Hair — A Tribute To Johnny Smith

"Mary Halvorson is one of the most acclaimed guitarists of her generation—a virtuoso improviser, distinctive composer, arranger and a deep student of the jazz guitar. Here she joins forces with living legend Bill Frisell to pay tribute to Johnny Smith, a guitarist who has been a huge influence on them both. Performing nine ballads associated with Smith and his classic composition Walk Don’t Run, this is an essential CD of soulful guitar duets by two of the most beloved and original guitarists in modern jazz. A beautiful CD of ballads like you have never heard them before!" - tzadik.com

Manhattan Theatre Club, under the artistic leadership of Lynne Meadow, has announced principal casting to join three-time Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad in a new Broadway revival of Saint Joan, written by Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner George Bernard Show and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan.

Bill Frisell’s solo album, Music IS, was released on March 16 on OKeh Records/Sony Music Masterworks.

Recorded in August, 2017 at Tucker Martine’s Flora Recording and Playback studio in Portland, Oregon and produced by longtime collaborator Lee Townsend, all of the compositions on Music IS were written by Frisell, some of them brand new – "Change in the Air", “Thankful", "What Do You Want", "Miss You" and "Go Happy Lucky" – others being solo adaptations of now classic original compositions he had previously recorded, such as "Ron Carter", "Pretty Stars", "Monica Jane", and "The Pioneers". "In Line", and “Rambler" are from Frisell’s first two ECM albums. Aside from the freely improvised album of 2013, Silent Comedy, for John Zorn’s Tzadik label, Music IS is Frisell’s first solo album since the making of Ghost Town, released on Nonesuch almost twenty years ago.

"Playing ‘solo' (alone) is always a challenge", Frisell says. "For me, music has all along been so much about playing with other people. Having a conversation. Call and response. Playing all by myself is a trip. I really have to change the way I think. In preparation for this recording I played for a week at The Stone in New York. Each night I attempted new music that I'd never played before. I was purposely trying to keep myself a little off balance. Uncomfortable. Unsure. I didn't want to fall back on things that I knew were safe. My hope was to continue this process right on into the studio. I didn't want to have things be all planned out beforehand.”

We would like everyone to know that there is a person misrepresenting him or herself on a fraudulent Bill Frisell Facebook page (that’s being shut down) offering lessons and workshops to cheat Frisell fans, admirers and presenters out of money by asking for advance payments on ficticious appointments and events that will never happen. As a point of information, the demands of Bill’s schedule do not allow him to give private lessons. Should you wish to present Bill in a workshop situation associated with a performance in the U.S, please contact Michael Morris at Monterey International/Paradigm; for Europe, Jakob Flarer at Saudades; and for the rest of the world, Phyllis Oyama at Songtone. To contact Michael, Jakob or Phyllis, go to the Contacts link.